Online Public Relations Thoughts

Daily entries on Public Relations and communications ideas and trends

Friday, September 28, 2007

Dictators

Dictators know the strength of communications so they control them. It is typical, therefore, that the ruling junta in Myanmar has cut internet communications to the country. The junta doesn't want the world to know what it is doing to stop demonstrations against it, and it might succeed. Still, there are ways for news to get out and it probably will.

The military rulers have lost the PR battle to demonstrating monks so it is using the one tool it knows -- raw power. Shooting demonstrators, injecting fear into the population and cutting the people's ability to talk to one another is a time-honored way of gaining control. The question that remains is whether the monks will give up. If they don't, the government will face a symbol that violence can't defeat.